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The Vanishing Woman

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Justice and the legal system were difficult and malleable forces during Defoe's lifetime, continually shifting and updating. At the time of the Restoration in 1600 there were 50 capital statutes, which rapidly rose to over 200 by the early 19th century. These shifts of identity in the judicial system are also apparent in the anxieties of the Augustan period in relation to criminals and, in particular, female criminals. The presence of female criminals in contemporary society has been studied by Malcolm Feeley and Deborah Little in their publication The Vanishing Woman (date) which suggests there was a marked decrease of female criminals between 1660 and 1800; in contrast, Peter King suggests that there is no explicit decrease and that Feeley …show more content…

As well as this, the denouement of the novel where Moll becomes a gentlewoman in Virginia provides an irony to Moll's youthful declaration - even if this identity comes into being through her incestuous (if accidental) marriage to her brother. For the majority of the narrative, however, Defoe defines Moll through her lack of identity and the performative aspects that accompany her malleability. During her reunion with Jemy in Newgate, where Moll is allegedly her most reformed and penitent, she still uses her "woman's rhetoric" (251), meaning tears, to entice him to forgive her, using emotions as a deceptive trick rather than an instinctive reaction to the reunion. She refers to herself flippantly as a "complete thief" (page) by way of defining herself, although she does balance the offhand assertion with a confession that she had never expected to indulge in a life of crime to the extent that she has. This self-identity is most damning in the context of the novel as a whole, which was published mimicking contemporary criminal narratives and boldly identifying her as "Twelve Year a Thief" and "a Transported Felon in Virginia" and Defoe further heightens this dominating identification as criminal by portraying Moll as comparing herself to a contemporary thief, …show more content…

The name signals promiscuity and a more general dishonesty, both of which are aspects of Moll's characterisation that shape her identity, or her lack of identity. When recalling the creation of the identity of 'Moll Flanders', she confesses that she could never "learn how they came to give me the name, or what the occasion of it was" (page) as well as emphasising the fact the name had been bestowed upon her by her fellow criminals, thereby highlighting the illicit nature and connotations of the name. Similarly, Defoe chooses to have the name Roxana bestowed upon his protagonist by another person in the central scene of the Turkish dance in Roxana. In Defoe's contemporary society, Roxana (like Moll) was a fairly common name that emphasises the vague foundations of their identities; but whereas Moll prompts associations of sexual promiscuity and falsities, Roxana is said to evoke the image of "harems and exotic, beautiful women." (footnote) Both of these definitions are comparatively othering, and yet suggest ways in which both of Defoe's female protagonists are regarded by

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